Origin-tracing. Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

On May 26, due to the crazy hype about the "lab leak" theory in the US, President Joe Biden demanded that US intelligence agencies investigate the origins of COVID-19 in 90 days. It is absurd to ask the intelligence organizations to answer a rigorous scientific question. They only serve politics and repeatedly fabricated false information for Washington's political needs. But Biden may be slowly falling into a plot to overthrow his administration.

The claim that COVID-19 virus may have leaked from a virology laboratory in Wuhan, China was put forth by former US president Donald Trump, then secretary of state Mike Pompeo and several Republican politicians who supported Trump. On January 15, Pompeo released a document entitled, "Fact Sheet: Activity at the Wuhan Institute of Virology." In this statement, he claimed that the US "has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019." Later in February, Matthew Pottinger, former US deputy national security adviser under the Trump administration, admitted that intelligence officers were involved in the production of this document.

According to CNN, Biden's demand for an investigation on the virus origins by the US intelligence community comes after a US intelligence report "found several researchers at China's Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill in November 2019." However, this is misinformation that the White House had already hyped up still under the Trump administration a long time ago. In other words, what motivated Biden might not be some "new information" from the current US intelligence community. It could be a conspiracy theory and rumor concocted by those intelligence services at the request of the Trump administration.

But why would the US intelligence organizations do that? Perhaps, we can find some clues in an opinion article by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham in June. Graham believes that Trump lost the 2020 US presidential election because of people's "early and near-total dismissal of the lab leak theory." Graham continued by saying that if the novel coronavirus is proven to be caused by a Chinese lab leak, then Trump should be the leader of the US to stand up to China and be the "commander in chief to lead the charge [against China]."

In fact, apart from Graham, millions of Trump supporters in the US still believe that Biden won the 2020 presidential election by cheating. Many of them even want Trump's comeback. What Graham has said leaves us to wonder: Is there an ulterior political motive behind these actions of the US intelligence community? Were they to set Biden up so that Trump can return to power, for example?

US intelligence agencies haven't reached a consensus on whether the virus came from a "lab leak" or nature. However, no matter which opinion eventually prevails in the US intelligence community, the results of the soon-to-be-released report will be a big trouble for Biden and even the Democratic Party either way.

Biden's approval rating has already dropped to the lowest point since taking office due to the chaotic withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. Now, if the COVID-19 is really "proven" to be leaked from the WIV, it will only mean that Trump and his Republican supporters were right all this time. This will certainly have an impact on next year's midterm elections. If not, Trump supporters, the Republican Party and the American public opinion that has already been seriously misled will likely call Biden "China's puppet." In general, it will be Biden's fault no matter what.

The idea of letting a highly politicized organization solve a scientific question makes no sense. Yet, the intelligence services in the US have decided to set up their own president by prompting him to accomplish the absurd right before an important point for US domestic politics. This is just abnormal in every way.

The author is a reporter of the Global Times. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn